On Michael's last day, Cece is found dead. Michael stays to help Dwight find who killed her. Holly pops up in each subsequent episode to express her displeasure with Michael staying in Scranton. Jim and Pam grieve endlessly. Someone in the (state) senator's office is leaking information. Darryl informs Jim that a friend of his works at Cece's daycare centre.

Are you technical?
In what way?
Do you know what "sequel" is?
Uhh…

"He explains what 'sequel' is, and I realize that 'sequel' is SQL, which I have always read as 'ess-cue-ell.' I know what SQL is, but don't bother clarifying that I do, fearing that I might look dim for knowing it as 'S-Q-L.'"

We're not gonna hire you as our office administrator, but we may use you as an intern. Are you on Facebook?
Yes.
I want you to log in on my laptop and complete a copy editing test.

"He exits the room to fetch his laptop, and I pull out my laptop because I just changed my Facebook password for security and can't recall it yet by memory. It's a randomly-generated 22-character password. As I'm transcribing it onto the palm of my left hand, he re-enters the room."

I just changed my password and…
[pause]

"The test is to edit some Engrish copy on a Korean company's web site. I finish and click 'submit' and am notified that I need to add more words to my edit. It's too edited. Before I can un-edit it some, however, Firefox crashes, and he re-enters the room soon after."

All right. Let's see what you did.
Erm… The browser crashed before I could save my edit.
I'll find it.

Plan B is touring America in support of The Defamation of Strickland Banks, a concept album about a soul singer who is wrongly imprisoned for rape. I expected him to sing falsetto and rap. I did not expect a beatboxer and moshing on stage. It was a fun, postmodern Motown (pomo Moto?) carnival of a show.

Bastille CelebrationMonday 7/18 vs. LAD 7:15pm
The Giants first home game after the actual Bastille Day is sure to be a great time for the Bay Area French community!

2nd Annual Professional Women's Networking Night, presented by Wharton MBA for Executives San FranciscoThursday, 8/4 vs. PHI 7:15 pm
Arrive early as we'll have an amazing panel discussion and Q&A with distinguished female executives from the Giants organization, Wharton, and other organizations around the Bay Area.

While creating this post, I discovered that Hot Pockets sells a stuffed crust product. I pictured a Taco Bell Double Decker Hot Pocket, but lo, it is a Hot Pocket with a stuffed pizza crust attached to it  like a birth defect.

Ooh! They added Submarine, Richard Ayoade's debut film. Only one screening, though, and on a Wednesday night. What if I get a job before…May 4?

You're right. Add to cart.

Submarine aside, I'm disappointed with the San Francisco International Film Festival's selections this year. The concurrent Independent Film Festival Boston programmed the two films* that I had hoped to see at SFIFF  plus Submarine! [grumbles]

* and they are:

Bellflower
Woodrow and Aiden spend their time building flamethrowers and other weapons in the hope that a global apocalypse will occur and clear the way for their imaginary gang, Mother Medusa, to reign supreme. While waiting for destruction to commence, Woodrow meets a charismatic young woman and falls in lovehard. Quickly integrating into her group of friends, Woodrow and Aiden set off on a journey of betrayal, love, hate, and extreme violence more devastating than any of their apocalyptic fantasies.

After The Tree of Life, Bellflower is the 2011 film that I most want to see. Beastie Boy Adam Yauch's film company acquired its distribution rights for an [sigh] August release.

Writer, director, and star Evan Glodell custom-built the camera that he used to shoot Bellflower and spent two years refining its editing and sound design.

The Catechism Cataclysm
A conflicted priest and life-long loser (Steve Little, Eastbound and Down) invites his childhood idol on a canoe trip that devolves into a David Lynch-esque nightmare.

Working title: Crossfire. It is a video game for two players inspired by chess-boxing.

One player must navigate a Mario-type character across a gigantic crossword puzzle plane (gigantic because its boxes are gigantic in length and width) and reach a flag in a set amount of time  a basic 3D platform game challenge. Travel on white boxes. Fall into a black area and you die.

Meanwhile, the other player tracks player one's movement on the crossword puzzle in 2D and tries to solve it accordingly. Decipher a clue correctly and the letters in that word crash down on player one's crossword plane as gigantic polyhedrons, impeding player one's movement or squashing him or her to death.

If player one reaches the flag, the following puzzle plane contains less white boxes. If player two prevents player one from reaching the flag, the following puzzle features more challenging clues.

Jon, what was the last concert you attended?
Gosh… Wolf Parade at the Music Box in Los Angeles in July 2008 with Forest and his brother. Been a while, heh.

I was gonna see Sunny Day Real Estate in October 2009, but didn't feel like traveling into the city that night, and the local Where's The Band? Tour (Dustin Kensrue/Matt Pryor/Chris Conley) date in January 2010 slipped my knowledge completely.

I dunno… I will never be an apostle of the redemptive power of live music.

Have you ever sat down and thought about 'One-Way Call' friends? These are the friends you have who you only see when you give them a call. Maybe they do call you once in a while, but the odds are that for every ten or fifteen times you call them, you're lucky if they call you even once, if at all.

How are you supposed to read this sort of person? I have about as many of these as I do fingers, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. Most of them are not people who I have a close connection with, but in at least two cases, they are people that I consider fairly close friends of mine.

What does it say about a friendship when only one of the two ever initiates anything? Is it possible to have a very strong friendship under those circumstances? Can people simply claim that they aren't pro-active as an excuse?

Good questions, though I'm afraid that none of the answers are what I would hope for.

» Begin the regular season on New Year's Day with the Winter Classic, and shorten the season by a month so that the Stanley Cup Finals are played at the end of July. In July, you don't compete against the NBA playoffs for viewers and media exposure. Your only competition is mid-season baseball. Moreover, people patronize cinemas in summertime to escape hot weather. The climate inside a hockey arena? Also cool.

» Contract six teams: Atlanta, Carolina, Florida, Nashville, Phoenix, and Tampa Bay. If the Northeast can live without college football, then the South can live without hockey. In the unlikely event of outrage, schedule a game or two every season in the South, like the NFL does in Toronto and London.

» Move the Columbus Blue Jackets to the Eastern Conference to create an even split.

» Expand the player rosters of the remaining 24 teams and play hockey games like soccer games  two 30-minute halves with one 15-minute intermission and added stoppage time. More players equals more time to rest players at rinkside.

» Play regular-season overtime periods with two pucks. Shoot-outs are lame. Minimize them.

» Advance six teams from each conference to the playoffs. The top two seeds in each conference earn byes in the first round. Upsets are fun, but excellence in the regular season should be rewarded.